Guided airborne bodies such as munitions or missiles are routinely constructed with flight surface deployment systems to provide control and extended range capability. These systems include one or more control mechanisms for moving a foldable and/or retractable flight surface to move the flight surface from a stowed position to an active or deployed position.
Recently, because of volume constraints inside the airborne body, designs of airborne bodies have required the flight surface and/or control mechanism to be stored on, or partially on, the exterior of the airborne body. This has increased the complexity of deployment systems, in particular, those in which the flight surface is rotated, in sequence, about multiple axes to, for example, position the flight surface at a sweep angle or other obliquity relative to the airborne body axis. Such deployment systems include a complex arrangement of parts such as actuators and lock mechanisms to enable achievement of the desired active or deployed position of the flight surface.
To reduce the number of rotations and axes about which the surface is rotated and, consequently, the number of parts of the deployment system, attempts have been made to simulate the multiple axes rotations with a single equivalent axis and single rotation. Although satisfactory, such attempts have not been without difficulty. For example, according to at least one known method, numerous axes and angles are attempted on a trial and error basis until a suitable single axis and single rotation angle are obtained. Such a method is inefficient and tedious.
Thus, a need exists for an effective method for designing a deployment mechanism for a flight surface on an airborne body. Such a method preferably minimizes intrusive volume, the number of parts, and the complexity of the deployment mechanism. Moreover, such a method preferably simplifies the manner by which a single axis and single rotation angle may be obtained about and through which a flight surface is rotatable.